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Happy Independence Day, fellow patriots

As the 4th of July approaches, I’ve been struggling with how to celebrate what used to be one of my favorite holidays. Growing up, it was a grand day of celebration. Each year my extended family descended upon my grandparents’ house decked out in red, white, and blue and armed with an entire arsenal of “Screaming Mimi’s,” “Bob’s flaming balls,” and our all-time favorite, the “Baby Boomer”; we would then proceed to eat our way through an all-day picnic while seeing exactly how large of an item we could launch sky-high using bottle rockets and waiting for it to get dark enough to begin our very own amateur fireworks display (what could go wrong?).

This year, though, I haven’t been feeling particularly patriotic. Honestly, given the current state of our nation, the thought of donning stars and stripes has been making me feel a little ill.

As I thought more and more dejectedly about boycotting the holiday altogether, however, it occurred to me that my disgust with our nation is patriotism. This holiday has always been about celebrating the promise of our nation in spite of the atrocities that litter our short history. We have never been a perfect union. But to turn away in defeat in the face of injustice is no better than turning a blind eye to it. To put our freedoms in action – be able to recognize our nation’s failures, to speak out against atrocities and injustices and work to correct them, to value the foundational principles of our democracy above the reprehensible actions of our leaders and work to make those principles a reality for all Americans – to me, that is true American patriotism.